Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,46

knot of roots. How frightening the jungle had seemed to Vida at first, how lush and lovely now. When they had collected enough leaves, Camilla plucked two flowers and carefully placed one behind Vida’s ear, weaving it into her hair.

“Here,” said Vida, and did the same for Camilla, tucking a bright pink burst of petals into her tumble of golden hair. Then Camilla smiled. Vida realized she’d never seen Camilla smile, not really. It was a wonderful, surprising smile, and before she could remember to be standoffish and difficult to please, Vida smiled back. It was only as they approached the encampment that Vida considered breaking her word to Camilla. She began a vociferous internal debate within herself over what could be assumed by the phrase “lady’s honor.”

In the course of the afternoon she had come to think of Camilla as her friend. And her friend Camilla had said very clearly that she did not want to talk about what had been between her and Fitzhugh anymore. Yet Vida very badly needed to know what exactly she had seen in the map room.

And just as Vida was trying to decide whether or not she could ask about that, she already had. “If Fitzhugh wasn’t yours, what were you doing with him?”

“When?”

“That night.”

“Oh.” After a moment Camilla said, “You mean what were we doing when you interrupted us?”

Vida’s pulse quickened as she remembered all that had happened since that moment. Those unreal hours when she and Fitzhugh and Sal remained close together as though that could undo the disaster. The sea, and everything after. “Yes.”

Camilla shrugged and squinted through the trees, in the direction of the bright beach. “He said he wanted to see me, and I was quite thrilled. We never really stopped, you know, even after I was married. But it would be only now and then that he’d pay me special attention. I lived for those times. Carlton was good to me. But he wasn’t loving, he wasn’t an exciting conversationalist, he didn’t . . . well, a lady doesn’t talk of that. So, when Fitzhugh did remember that I existed, it always thrilled me, and I couldn’t wait till we were together.”

“And so you were together that night? Again, like you used to be.”

“No. . . .” Camilla shook her head. “No. I thought we would be. But when I reached for him in the old way, he said it was over. That it was really over this time, and I must not hope for it to be revived.” Her face was drained of color—the memory seemed to age her in an instant.

Some small and demanding part of Vida whispered, “Did he tell you why?”

Camilla’s lips trembled. Her eyes took on a faraway quality. “I can only guess. I didn’t want to hear that, and I left—or tried to leave—before he could explain.”

Vida’s thoughts raced. She needed to hear the end of this story. Yet she sensed she must somehow learn patience. Camilla would tell the story in her own time. They kept walking and Vida had to hurry to keep their piece of fabric piled with kindling aloft. In the encampment, they wordlessly lowered their haul to the sand. Camilla stood, stretched her arms up to the sun hovering over the placid expanse of ocean.

“There was something different about him that night,” Camilla said. “I could tell it was not the same old game. I don’t know what had changed him,” she went on with a shrug. “Maybe he finally felt too guilty about Carlton. Or maybe it was you.” She lifted her arms to undo the knot of her hair, so that her golden mane spilled down her back.

They stood together in a silence thick with significance.

Down at one end of the beach, the Misses Van Huysen had climbed the high rocks. They too were looking out. Miss Flynn and Eleanor and Dame Edna and the two women whose husbands were employed by the sugar companies in Hawaii—Ingeborg and Sonja—were sitting in a huddle watching the children. The children were using a piece of driftwood to whack a small drained coconut that served quite nicely as a ball. One of them shrieked—an actual shriek of pleasure—and then another one of them laughed, and it was a real laugh, the kind a person can’t help, or fake. That true and joyous sound filled Vida with such a feeling—it was either all the feelings, or one that was new to her.

A smile overcame Camilla’s face and she